Sunday, February 9. 2014

Back again after a week’s gap.Last weekend was the worst yet.Saturday working was cancelled on February 1st
as the forecast suggested so much snow.In retrospect that may have been overkill as we did work yesterday when
more snow fell than actually arrived the previous week ….. the forecast just
did not seem as bad!!.

I have been out at the museum more this week as I
take on the role of museum Treasurer.The museum site is an incredible Winter wonderland.Dave and the B&G team have done a great
job keeping the roads open.He was
saying yesterday that the plough truck has run about 220 miles so far this
season simply clearing on site.However
each working day we have to dig our way into the shop, clear drifts to get to
equipment like the compressor and any idea of moving equipment or getting at
boxcars or containers is a joke.There
are considerable drifts or barriers of ploughed snow everywhere you look.

Anyway, Phil and Tom braved the elements last
Sunday and did some work on 428.

This Saturday I was heavily involved in the Board
meeting and some follow on Treasurer activities so was not very productive in
the shop.However, there was a good turn
out and substantial progress.

On 1630:

The major step forward was
reaching general agreement of the plan for painting.This does not sounds much but is actually
rather complicated.We have two (or effectively
three) methods of painting different areas.Large parts of the loco will be sprayed.However, there are substantial areas that are so confined and irregular
in shape that it seems impossible that a decent finish could be achieved with
asprayer.So brush painting seems logical for these.(The third category is areas in so deep and
covered in grease that the logical approach seems to be leave well alone, for
example the leading truck frame).The
whole process is complicated by the fact that, while everything is painted
black, it is expected that the two painting methods, using different materials,
will show shade differences. So we do
not want the two methods used directly next to one another.

The final plan is that the
wheels and frames will be brush painted while the upper works (cab, boiler,
tender) will be sprayed.The wheels were
a particularly tough choice.There is no
doubt that 4 and 5 could be sprayed.Also 3 could be sprayed, but would require several moves of the loco to
get at all the spokes.However, 1 and 2,
heavily concealed behind connecting rods, cross heads and slide bars would be a
near impossible target for spraying.(The
picture below of #1 is taken looking vertically down behind the slide bars so
imagine getting at this with a substantial sprayer!).So all will be brush painted as the
likelihood is that a shade difference would be very obvious if we sprayed just
the ones we could.

With this done progress started
to become visible.

Jim
had brought in a much more powerful pressure washer.He and Jerry did a further degreasing run on
the frames, wheels, and everything that was not in the leave well alone category.

Inside the frames now grease free

#1 driver grease free but behind the
slide bars

Following
this preparation much of the lower part of the locomotive is now assessed as
ready to be primed once dry or requiring just a small amount of wire brushing
to allow priming.(A key part of the
need to agree how each area is to be painted was that the spray epoxy does not
require a primer while the brush applied finish does).

Substantial
areas were dry by afternoon.So painting
began with priming the wheels.While Jim
did most of the work, our General Manager came by the shop and spotted the need
to fill in a gap.It is a rarity to seem
Jamie at work in the Steam Shop so we have recorded this event as our
ceremonial first painting on 1630.

Jamie does the ceremonial first
painting

By
end of day three wheels were primed.The
ability to start painting created a lot of enthusiasm.I received the picture below from Jim.By Sunday several of the wheels are finished
with the black top coat.

Impressive progress by Sunday

On
the superstructure, part of the preparation for spraying is removal of pipes
that will create shadows when spraying.One of these is the steam supply for the air pump that runs from the
governor high up on the fireman’s side of the firebox.

The pipe runs from the union at top
down the join between firebox and barrel

Collin
needed to re-lag this anyway so he and Paul managed to release a union and
remove it.As with lots of things on an
old steam engine, one thing leads to another.It was obvious that moisture trapped in the lagging had caused some
corrosion on the steel pipe.After
thorough wire brushing and hammer testing no obvious failures were found but it
was clearly not in good condition so the decision was made to have a
replacement fabricated.In matters like
this we want to avoid any doubt and there is currently time to have the
replacement made before the season.

Collin removes the lagging

Paul removes the rust and scale

Jason
and Phil worked on the manifold for the stoker.The casting was damaged and Dennis fixed this some time ago.The threaded holes into which fit the steam
connections had to be recut and then the steam connections fitted.By end of day the manifold was ready to
refit.

Stoker manifold repaired

As
a “British” fireman who has never seen a stoker in operation I learned
something.The stoker on 1630 is not
operational at present as the screw drive in the tender needs work.So I had assumed that the steam manifold
(which controls the jets fire the coal around the box from the distribution
plate) was simply decorative at this time.It seems this is not so.If the
fireman is feeling tired he can put coal onto the distribution plate manually
and then use the steam to fire it up to the front of the firebox.You live and learn!.

I
did my penance for spending most of the day out of the shop by crawling into
the firebox to test fit a sample of the new fire brick.Although I spent days in there when fitting
tubes, fitting the fire hole door casting has made this a whole new experience.What used to be a simple exercise is now more
like getting toothpaste into a tube for one of my build.Anyway the conclusion after Jason and Phil
had put in a few more of the arch bricks is that the shorter F5 bricks, that
are readily available, cause only a marginal lift in the arch bricks so should
be usable.

On the Shay, Phil took advantage
of the degreasing set up for #1630 and did a thorough job on the truck.Hopefully, once dry and examined, this will
also start to see new paint applied.

Truck degreased for painting

On #428 quite a lot was
happening:

Dennis
started the long job of building up the axle boxes.The first step, on which he was working
yesterday, is to build up the damaged areas that will be behind the plates
which will be added to the box castings.Once built up, these areas will need to be finally ground to shape so
that there is a solid surface to which the plates will be mounted;

Dennis starts building up the axle
boxes

Mike
was back after his trip to Arizona and restarted work on the air pump.Not much visible progress today.The first big step was to locate the many
substantial parts of this 3 dimensional jigsaw and work out exactly how they
must fit together. What fits where is only part of the challenge. It is immediately clear that it would be very easy to assembly a lot of it and then discover that a key part should have been fitted earlier in the sequence!.

Jane
was hard at work on the frame binders that join the frame at the bottom of each
axle box guide.Dennis has done a good
deal of repair work on these and they now need to be cleaned off, ground smooth
and then machined to fit accurately into the frames.

Jane works on the binders

In the shop in general:

It
was a worrying day on the planer.Mike,
Bob and Ed worked on preparing it for a further test of the hydraulic drive
system while Jane completed painting the machine.Unfortunately a second attempt to start the
hydraulic pump caused a blow in the gasket that failed last time, although we
are now confident that the surfaces are flat after surface grinding.This leaves us with a puzzle.Documentation of this machine is distinctly
limited.We know it should operate at a
high pressure (suggested around 1200psi).The key question is whether this seal is failing at a pressure at which
it should not or if some blockage or error in assembly is causing pressure to
build substantially above the intended level.Needless to say there is no tapping that would allow us to fit a gauge.

So back on the job and a lot was achieved in the
day.I am off to Mexico for a week so
will miss next weekend but look forward to seeing a lot more paint when I get
back

I would like to know more about volunteering with the Steam Department at the museum. I'm a college kid (21 years old) from south east Wisconsin that has always been fascinated with steam locomotives, and would love to learn how to work on them. I have no experience working on them, however. I've seen the volunteering requirements on the website, but is there anything else I should know? Also, who should I contact to begin? Excellent work on the 1630!

Christian,
There is not much beside what is on the website. You need to be a member (one key reason being that insurance only applies to members).
I will send you a standard e-mail of expectations in the Steam Shop when I get home. However the general guidance is that the work may well be pretty basic to start with but, if you demonstrate that you are keen to learn and reliable, (it is easy o do a lot of damage quickly if you do not recognize when to ask about something you do not understand) you can get involved in more substantial projects quite quickly.
Nigel

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